'The world is ending.'
That was the sole, astounding thought that managed to retain some measure of coherence in Draxion's mind.
The wind riled up into a vicious tempest, threatening to unearth the whole forest as easily as a person snapped a fragile branch. The expansive, lavender canopy quivered in its rage, birds letting their wings soar to escape, only for that lift to become their sentence, swept bodily into the storm.
In violent shudders, the earth tore apart. Cracks appeared in the ground and spread out to every direction, devouring trees, animals and more. Every tremor, every quake, it felt like it would give out.
Mana distorted in uncontrollable phenomena. Cracks of lightning and thunder fell upon the earth into a shroud of heatwaves that razed the vegetation. The shimmers of untapped power snapped in rage, fracturing, reforming, set in chaos by nothing but pressure.
Yet.
The calamities paled against the precursor, the source of them. Obscuring the entire world, eclipsing the sun in its eternal glory. A behemoth, monstrous, awe-inspiring and terror inducing shadow plummeted from the cosmos.
Those that could see it deemed the apocalypse was here.
One man, instead, welcomed it with wide-open arms. His body met stillness instead of an instinctual urge to flee. He didn't look at it with fear, nor terror. There was only a pure, unrestrained, maniacal curiosity in his eyes.
In his position, on a mountain that overshadowed the world, he could tell.
This was not an astral body. Not divine punishment sent by any gods. Not an ancient, forbidden magis, forgotten by eons.
It was a being. An existence.
And it was landing.
✦✦✦
Draxion Aerendyl, the first of his name, crown prince of the Aerendyl Imperium.
He was an inquisitive man, one that put more value on knowledge and discovery than rulership itself. It was to a point it brought endless frustration to the Emperor, whose commands were so often answered with absence.
Born into a role that confined him to duty, Draxion had made it a habit to slip away into escapades, adventures if one asked him. Even though he wasn't a great warrior nor magus, he had been born with a pronounced atavism from their imperial house ancestry of yore. It permitted him to wield its unique magis with ease as protection, sometimes clumsily, sometimes with unsettling precision, some considering him a genius.
Resonance.
The sensitivity to empathic bonds. With it, Draxion was capable of using his magis to set up a link betwixt souls, to tame monsters and beasts, to feel their emotions and senses.
It's because of this exceptional compatibility that he felt it. The monstrous existence that descended from the skies had no ill intent. It simply was here, the calamities a byproduct of its presence.
And more, it was injured and exhausted beyond any scale he ever had set his eyes upon.
The existence must've noticed him, for Draxion felt a subtle, empathic pull in the direction where it was crashing mountains and valleys in its arrival. The calling wasn't akin to the stories of eld. It wasn't majestic, nor a supreme blessing.
It was instinctual.
And Draxion felt it in his curious heart, mutual.
Thus, without hesitation, he made the journey. The scale of distance and size had been lost to him, incapable of comprehending the existence's magnitude with his human senses. He but let the empathic pull guide him, climbing into perilous mountains and crossing treacherous valleys.
In the odd, hyper-focused and invigorated state he felt himself in, he didn't even realise the passage of time. His steps bringing him further, his mind probing into strands of consciousness of a being far out of his league, each attempt scraping against limits outside his domain.
The sensory overload threatened to overwhelm him dozens of times. Draxion was a human, he wasn't capable of seeing the world through the eyes and senses of such an existence. It made his soul melt, his identity to thin under pressure alone.
It was unbearable, but he kept looking for more threads, more ways to bond with the being. He instinctively understood that wasn't possible, that he wasn't worthy of it, that his mortal body simply couldn't handle the impact.
Still, in his madness to know more, he kept trying.
And at last, Draxion's knees buckled against the pressure, his back curling as he fell against the sturdy ground. The veins in his body risking to implode with the force, his skin morphing into a deep crimson from effort, his breath stuttering and heartbeat losing sequence.
Yet, it had been enough. Draxion glimpsed into it.
He pressed his forehead against the ground– no, the exterior of the existence itself, its scales. He let his resonance pulse like a signal, mana deforming in his surroundings as he pushed his body and lineage to the very limit.
The beacon of his soul was like a bright, vivid yellow star. It paled in comparison to the supermassive black hole that surrounded it. In this cosmos, the black hole let out a single, gentle flare that moved through a distance that couldn't be measured. It touched upon Draxion's soul.
Darkness.
His consciousness was thrust into darkness. Not in the literal sense, but the pitch black of space. Draxion was vaguely capable of spotting faint dots far away, more stars.
And amidst them, in zones of unnatural absence.
A cloud of a phase-aligned mass, acting without individuality in synchronized movement. They were not bound by morality, nor any sort of restraint. They erased everything they touched in an endless duty of correction. Their numbers were enough to shroud the cosmos themselves.
Loss, exhaustion, an instinctual desire to survive.
These emotions came not from the cloud of relentless destruction, but from the existence he was linked to. It had run away, but it knew it was only to delay the inevitable confrontation.
Draxion was bashed back into reality, his whole body boiling with fever and pain. Blood had dripped down from his nose, ears, and lips, yet despite this poor state, he didn't even consider his condition.
His mind was warped by the visions he had seen.
The existence touched upon his soul again, gentler, careful not to break it into a myriad of fragments. Draxion felt its sentiment, worn-out, in need of repose and nourishment to remedy.
A desire to endure. A recognition of necessity. An agreement to protect, and be protected.
It was asking him.
He forced his shaky soul to respond, to pulse brightly into reciprocation. An aspiration, to stand together, however impossibly.
On this day, Draxion reshaped the story of his entire line and civilization, for eons to come.